Richard Garwin

Richard Lawrence Garwin (born April 19, 1928 died May 13, 2025) is an American physicist. He is widely known to be the author of the first hydrogen bomb design.^[1]

Garwin was born in Cleveland, Ohio.^[2] He received his bachelor's degree from the Case Institute of Technology in 1947, and two years later his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago under the supervision of Enrico Fermi.

In 2016, President Barack Obama honored Garwin with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.^[3] In 1947, Garwin married Lois Levy (died 2018), and they had three children, one of whom is musician and journalist Laura Garwin. He died at his home in Scarsdale, New York, on May 13, 2025, at the age of 97.^[4][5]

• Annotated Bibliography for Richard Garwin from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Archived 2012-03-02 at the Wayback Machine
• Richard Garwin's personal web site
• Garwin Archive
• Oral History interview transcript with Richard Garwin 23 October 1986, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives Archived 19 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine
• Oral History interview transcript with Richard Garwin 7 June 2001, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives Archived 26 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine
• Oral History interview transcript with Richard Garwin 24 June 1991, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives Archived 2 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine
• Garwin Archived 2017-02-23 at the Wayback Machine, documentary on Richard Garwin's life and work